The Project Gutenberg EBook of Omega, the Man, by Lowell Howard Morrow

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Title: Omega, the Man

Author: Lowell Howard Morrow

Illustrator: Leo Morey

Release Date: October 11, 2008 [EBook #26882]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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A Classic Reprint from AMAZING STORIES, January, 1933

[Illustration]

OMEGA, the MAN

By LOWELL HOWARD MORROW

Illustrated by MOREY

The silver airship cut swiftly through the hot thin air. The noonday sun
blazed down upon it and the desert world below. All about was the solemn
silence of death. No living thing appeared either in the air or on the
drab, gray earth. Only the aircraft itself displayed any signs of life.
The sky, blue as indigo, held not the shadow of a cloud, and on the
horizon the mountains notched into it like the teeth of a giant saw.

The airship finally came to a hovering stop, then dropped rapidly toward
the salt-encrusted plain. It came to rest at last on the bottom of a
great, bowl-shaped hollow situated at the end of a chasm whose gray,
rock-strewn sides rose in rugged terraces for miles back into the sky.
In a few moments a panel in the vessel's side rolled noiselessly upward,
disclosing a brilliant light, and from the interior of the airship soon
appeared two figures who paused at the aperture and gazed out over the
parched earth. Then without fear or visible effort--although they were
seventy-five feet above the ground--they emerged from the ship and
floated down to earth.

These two humans--the sole survivors of all earth's children--were man
and wife--Omega and Thalma. They were burned a deep cherry by the fierce
rays of the sun. In stature they were above the average man now on
earth. Their legs were slender and almost fleshless, because for many
centuries man had ceased to walk. Their feet were mere toeless
protuberances attached to the ankle bone. Their arms were long and as
spare as their legs, but their hands, although small, were
well-proportioned and powerful. Their abdominal reg